other thoughts, as if it leaped up among them from a lower darkness; and when it arrived it wanted to stay. So a traveller, still roaming the world afar, sometimes broods without apparent reason upon his family burial lot: "I wonder if I shall end there."
The foreboding passed abruptly, with a jerk of her breath, as the street-lamp revealed a tall and easy figure approaching from the north, swinging a stick in time to its stride. She had given Russell up—and he came.
"What luck for me!" he exclaimed. "To find you alone!"
Alice gave him her hand for an instant, not otherwise moving. "I'm glad it happened so," she said. "Let's stay out here, shall we? Do you think it's too provincial to sit on a girl's front steps with her?"
"'Provincial'? Why, it's the very best of our institutions," he returned, taking his place beside her. "At least, I think so to-night."
"Thanks! Is that practise for other nights somewhere else?"
"No," he laughed. "The practising all led up to this. Did I come too soon?"
"No." she replied, gravely. "Just in time?"
